


jeremiah 8:20

by UnfortunatelyObsessed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Beat Generation, Catholic Guilt, Dean's POV, Gen, I really dk what to tag this, Kerouac, SO, Stream of Consciousness, beat style, once I saw someone use 'catholic guilt' as a tag and ever since then I've also wanted to use it, prophet Dean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21922387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnfortunatelyObsessed/pseuds/UnfortunatelyObsessed
Summary: I'd tuck the tomes under my coat because it was illegal, Dad said it was illegal to read the kinds of books that made good little soldiers go AWOL.And I thought, I won't go AWOL. This is my family, why would I ever leave?And Kerouac whispered, "Oh, this is why."
Comments: 67
Kudos: 20
Collections: Demon Void Army - Family Album





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."

I read too much when I was little.

_ On the Road _ stuck in my head, words bouncing like goddamn trampolines from the sides of my brain.

"Hey hey hey," they said, "look at us, coupla cards. Ace of spades, dig your own grave, look at me, look at me, look at  _ us, _ on the road, you and me, you and me…"

I'd tuck the tomes under my coat because it was illegal, Dad said it was illegal to read the kinds of books that made good little soldiers go AWOL.

And I thought, I won't go AWOL. This is my family, why would I ever leave?

And Kerouac whispered, "Oh, this is why."

But I thought, "No, no not enough, not even  _ close _ to enough, fucker. I'm here. This is my place in the world and I'll die here in these very boots."

Then  _ Big Sur _ stuck to my fingers in the library, late some night with Sammy doing homework and the girl I had been testing the shelves with long gone.  _ Big Sur _ stuck to my fingers and inside my jacket like wet newspaper sticks to your face when the cold wind blows it up. My fingerprints were all over the book now and I had the delirious thought that I couldn't turn it in or leave it behind because what if they  _ found _ me, what if I went to jail for stealing a book from a library. The librarian had been tall and hunched over like a crow, like a vulture, and there was no way she didn't see me, no way at all—

_ Baby baby baby, _ the book caressed.  _ Relax, man. Take a load off. _

But books were still illegal so I hunched in the bathtub late at night with matches burning my fingertips because flashlights were too bright, too bright indeed, and I didn't sleep at all.

I stood up with ocean on my tongue and fear in my heart and a very real thought that I had spent my life until this point just floating in the waves, and now here I was opening my mouth for a breath only to find I was still caught suffocating.

The sunlight streamed in the filthy window and had it always been so filthy? Had our lives always been so wild and whacked out and drug-ridden, was alcohol a drug? Was Dad a drug addict, was this all some sick twisted game that we were being pawns in?

(Well yes, yes it was but more on that later.)

I had the crazed notion that I had to clean the windows because goddammit I wanted to be in charge of  _ something. _ I shoved all the little matchsticks in my pockets and they broke easily, I burned so many matches, I could've set so many bodies on fire with those but instead I set my own self on fire and oh, how fitting. There weren't paper towels so I used my shirt sleeves to wipe off the window and it only streaked more, and I had the thought that if I had been a ghost set on fire, what was I now?

Someone banged on the door and I was sure it was Dad, but it wasn't, it was Sammy. He opened the door, all tired-eyed and yawning, and asked me what I was doing.

And I was cleaning the world so we could see better, because there were answers just beyond our reach and maybe if we could see clearly we'd be able to figure this shit out but I couldn't tell him that, it was early in the morning and I was hogging the bathroom.

So I told him I wasn't doing nothing and I left the bathroom, book and all its words sticking to the outside of my ribs.

Dad was still passed out drunk like usual, bottle on the floor very evident of where he had been drinking from it, whiskey barely pooling out of its lip and I desperately wished to never end up like that, but also how was I any better, cleaning the window like a lunatic with a shirt sleeve that was too short on me anyway?

I left without a word, and sure I'd be in trouble later but that was later and this was now and I wanted to brave the vulture again. It was five in the morning though and the sun still hadn't bothered warming my face and the double glass doors were locked, and what was I to do?

I remembered a book shop downtown from earlier, from when we had been looking for the bar so I turned tail and headed that way,  _ Big Sur _ bouncing traitorously against my ribs and my heart.

And it was still five in the morning and the book shop was also closed but there was a coffee shop across the road that was very much open so I figured I would wait there before getting my fingers sticky again.

Lots of things are sticky, but especially blood that has just started to dry, and I knew that feeling well and I felt like I needed to wash every inch of my body because this book was stuck to me because I was covered in blood. No one else could see the blood though and no one spared me a second glance as I sat in a window seat and didn't order a damn thing.

I noticed a girl across from me, blonde and curvy with a skirt style that belonged about a decade in the past, and she was reading some book or another and I felt the need to strike up a conversation, but I didn't get the chance because she stood up and placed her book on a shelf.

There was a big shelf in the cafe that I hadn't noticed, filled with a weird hodgepodge of weird things but mostly books, so I sidled over there to read the titles.

There was a sign overhead that read "Book Exchange" detailing out some rules that basically boiled down to: take one, leave one.

I immediately searched the shelf for more Kerouac because he was all I knew and he pounded against my ribs physically and metaphorically, and I found him of course on the third shelf about in the middle, some book about Dharma Bums and I had to make a quick decision. Under my shirt I had old knowledge and in my hand I had  _ new _ knowledge and I had to pick one quick. I didn't know why it had to be quick but it did, there was urgency thrumming in my veins but no one was watching so I pretended to put  _ Big Sur _ on the shelf but really I took them both.

That was enough stickiness for one morning so I ran back to the cheap ass motel we were staying in, and Sammy was still in the shower and Dad was passed out so I dug to the bottom of my single duffel bag and stowed my two books in there, along with the old and battered copy of  _ On the Road _ that had my mother's name in the front cover.

I was officially a fugitive, on the run from the law and the law was my father, drunken-eyed and hazy but quick as a whip and stronger than fucking stone. Three books and thousands of words and I sat back and thought about if he ever found them, what I would do. I played like I would stick my nose up and say quote after quote from these books until his face was red, and then I'd declare myself a Kerouacian and I'd leave, I would, I'd go AWOL out into the world and make it on my own. But then I thought of Sammy and I didn't want to leave  _ him _ here alone, so I tucked that scene away to play in my mind on bad nights when I desperately wanted to throw back the covers and run away.

And that is, among other things, how rebellion planted itself in my liver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got this headcanon that Dean would write like Kerouac


	2. Chapter 2

I first heard the voices not long after.

I was on a hunt with Dad, crawling through the underbelly of an old cathedral when I felt the pricks at my sides like spiders jamming themselves into my pores. I shone my flashlight around but there was nothing, only holy dirt with holy worms writhing in it. So I kept crawling.

A body, Dad had said. There was a body under this building and we had to find it.

So that's what I was doing, I was crawling around in the grave dirt of an unknown man under a cathedral. I heard it creak above me, as if it was threatening to just collapse and save me from every sin I had ever committed. I almost reached out to touch the wooden supports, but my hands were filthy and blasphemous and maybe I was starting to not believe in God but I didn't not believe enough to risk it.

I heard a whisper, far to my left away from Dad, and it said,  _ "Dean." _

I went fucking cold, man. I could hear my heart beating in my ears, its thudding in my throat. The beam of the flashlight trembled and I could only just convince myself to fucking shine it that way.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I breathed out and crawled forward more. I couldn't see Dad anymore, he was too far ahead. It was just me and the grave.

_ "Dean." _

I dropped like a stone, covering my head and breathing dust into my lungs. I was trembling, when had I ever  _ trembled _ before?

My dad yelled my name from up ahead somewhere, and there was a brush of absolute cold against my shoulder. I looked over and saw a ghost, a priest ghost, and I remember thinking vaguely that ghosts shouldn't be able to manifest on holy ground. His face was terrified. He was trying to speak to me, trying to  _ warn _ me of something.

_ "Dean," _ came again, not from him, and he went up in a blaze of blue light.

_ "Dean." _

_ "Dean." _

_ "Dean." _

"Stop," I whispered, begged, and my flashlight went out.

Dad drug me kicking and screaming out of the underbelly of the church. I don't remember what happened when my flashlight went out, but I remember my ears rang for three days with the word  _ Adonai. _

Dad said apparently the ghost had vanished, had disappeared without a trace and I couldn't tell him that I saw it happen, that I saw terror in its eyes and I really didn’t think it went to a better place at all. I couldn’t tell him my dreams were weird now, that they were in a language I didn’t know at all, that I saw things I could never really describe.

I think Sam knew something was weird, because we slept in the same bed a lot and he knew I was having — well, not nightmares but something similar.

I woke up in a cold sweat the night before we were set to leave and I couldn’t take it anymore.

I snuck out, back to the church, knife tucked into the back of my waistband, worn shoes slapping through mud, hair sticking to my face. I felt covered, concealed, and when the church spire came into view, I was unafraid.

I walked in boldly, like I owned the place, like I was God himself coming to have a nice snack at the sacrificial altar.

It was quiet, the sort of quiet that sets your nerves on edge and has you glancing around a lot, convinced there was something —  _ something _ just on the edges of your vision. Something cold and dark and vicious, something that a knife tucked into the back of a kid’s jeans wasn’t gonna hurt.

“Hello?” I called out, really hoping nothing was gonna answer.

Nothing did.

I moved forward slowly, one foot in front of the other, tracking mud and worms and terror into this holy place.

With a loud  _ clunk, _ a book fell out of a pew.

I jumped. Of course I jumped. I turned towards the noise and the flash of lightning lit up the church. It was empty, except for me. Except for my thumping heart and my brain calling me foolish, foolish to have come here alone at night.

But I was already there, and I was already terrified so I might as well go investigate the noise.

When I reached the middle of the pew, it was like… like thunder, in my soul. I fell down, my knees hit hard enough to bruise as my entire being was thrown into the storm. I heard my name again, that same voice, that same name — was it my name? It was said so many times that it started to not mean anything. Dean, Dean, Dean, and none of it was me.

The voice asked if I could hear it, could understand it, and I was but a single fucking leaf in a hurricane so how could I have said yes? How could I have said no?

It revealed itself to me, it told me of the future, of divinity, of heroism and prophecy and apocalypses and hellfire. Thunder against my fucking eardrums, and it was only whispering. My hands were earthquakes. My eyes were fire.

“Dean,” it said, it said, it said. “Who will I send?”

And I was an ant being hit with the full force of a firehose, I was a ladybug being smashed slowly with a cleat, I was a boy with cement being forced into his lungs, and they expelled for me, “Me. Me. Lord,  _ send me.” _

And I forgot what it was to know quiet, to know peace.

_ Adonai, _ echoing in my ears even after I rose from the ground, shaking, shaking.

_ Adonai, _ forming on my lips silently as the Impala drove on, on, to the next place.

_ Adonai, _ the name. His name. Adonai.

God.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one doesn't really have an update schedule, but there is an actual story with a plot now!


	3. Chapter 3

When people used to talk about prophets, those sideshow tent churches that inevitably popped up in the towns we saved, they talked about knowing the future, about people with status, with power.

When I tried to say the word prophet, I tasted blood.

I didn’t really sleep after that night. There were too many voices in my head, too much to hear, to understand. The voices told me I was something new, something beyond human, beyond prophet, half-divine and heaven-starved.

When I did sleep, my dreams kept me awake for weeks.

Sam noticed the change first, because he was Sam, and he knew me, knew my bones, my flaws, the miscalculations in my biological code. He asked why there were always bags under my eyes now, and I told him I was just having a rough go of it. I didn’t tell him that I now knew humans had stripes. He had stripes on his face, if I knew where to look. They trailed across his cheeks, over the bridge of his nose, disappeared behind his ears.

The voices didn’t really like Sam, though they would never really tell me why. But they didn’t care for Dad, either, so maybe I was just special to them. Or maybe they hated me, too.

Sometimes they would whisper things to me that I didn’t want to know, that the man sitting two booths down from us was going to murder his wife that night, and that I couldn’t stop it if I tried. To not try. Do not try, Dean, don’t you  _ fucking _ try.

And what had I always been but a soldier, so I obeyed.

It was easier if I obeyed, ya know? It seemed quieter, like they were whispering instead of yelling, and there was this rush of just…  _ pride _ in me that was addicting. I had never had someone be proud of me before. I wanted more of that. They knew it, too.

_ Tell that woman her child has the flu. _

_ Touch that beggar’s forehead. _

_ Whisper to that man that he is going to Hell. _

I knew names of people before they spoke a word. I knew where the monster lairs were. I knew when to duck if Dad was going to swing. They whispered to me, yelled at me, soothed me, tortured me. I began to rely on them, and I think that’s what they wanted all along. They were molding me, shaping me to be the exact form of clay that He needed.

When Dad stared at me with horror in his eyes, demanding to know what I was and where his son had gone, I told him that I knew the name of the demon who had killed Mom.

It slipped off my tongue and it  _ burned, _ it left welts on the roof of my mouth and blood in my throat. It was not a human word. It was not a word that should have been spoken.

Dad rushed me to the hospital because my throat was closing up, because I had first-degree burns on my esophagus and down my throat and across my tongue, because I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t  _ fucking _ breathe —

Breathing tubes feel like throwing up in slow motion.

Dad didn’t leave my bedside, I remember that. I remember because of how tender it was. Dad never really let Sam and me see the soft side of him, so we never knew it existed. All we knew was this man made of stone and spears that led us into battle with the forces of evil, and sometimes his mind fucked up and he couldn’t tell what was evil and what wasn’t. But here he was, sitting beside me, eyes dark and worried with bags big enough to hold all his sorrows beneath them, and he was staring at me.

When they let me out, he asked me what happened.

And I told him God spoke to me.

He took me to a priest, then. I don’t know where Sam was, probably with Bobby or something. He said I had been talking in tongues, and that I knew things I shouldn’t and asked if the priest could perform an exorcism.

_ Exorcism. _

He tried, anyways.

We had to skip town after that, because the voices in my head didn’t take kindly to someone trying to shove them out.

I was sleeping — in a separate bed from Sam, which was weird for that time period, but Dad didn’t trust the parasites in me — when suddenly I woke up, sweaty and gasping, and it was quiet again. Or at least, quieter.

Dad came into the motel room a while later. I hadn’t even heard him leave. He asked if I felt any better, and I said yes, and that was the end of that.

At breakfast the next morning, though, I noticed that his lips were burnt.

The whispers were faint, barely there, easy for me to ignore, but I heard them all the same:

He was a clock counting down.

He had danced with the devil, and he had lost.


	4. Chapter 4

Things were relatively normal after that, in the way hunting monsters was ever normal. I could block the voices out, I could sleep again, I felt like _me_ again.

Dad glanced over his shoulder way more than he ever used to before, but for all Sam knew it was just his everyday paranoia.

I knew, though.

There's this— I don't want to call it a haze, more of a _displacement_ in people, as if there was something intrinsic to their lungs that was three inches too far to the left, that only happens when their soul is owned by someone else. I didn't know that's what it was at first, but as time went on and I saw more and more people just slightly off-center, it started to line up in my brain. Dad had sold his soul. He had sold it so I wouldn't burn myself up saying words in ancient languages that I had no right pronouncing, that I didn't have the _anatomy_ to pronounce. I needed more tongues, more fire, less soul, less flesh. I was inadequate for those words, but I still sometimes heard their echoes in my cerebral cortex. They gave me migraines. They made my vision swim.

It made me angry.

Yeah, yes, I _know_ I shouldn't have been angry at my dad. But I was. I was angry in that seething way that hides behind your eyes glinting in the buzzing light from a lamp with a shade all askew. He had given his life for me, and I didn't ask him to, and I didn't _want_ him to, because I was a good little soldier and I didn't need anyone taking care of me. _I_ took care of _everyone else_ please and thank you.

And so I was angry, and dad was scared, and Sam wouldn't stop staring with those big eyes.

I wondered what was behind them a lot, ya know. Little kid with a big-ass brain, with books weighing down his backpack and test scores pushing him into the next three grades. Did he think about math? Girls? TV shows?

He didn't think about monsters because we made sure he never needed to.

Oh he'd find out sooner or later, but we all preferred later instead of sooner, though with soft whispers in the back of my head I was beginning to wonder where on that monster-or-human seesaw I was. Then again, with dad walking around with a giant dog target on his back, maybe Sammy was the only truly human one of us. Which, was a weird thought, because there was a displacement in him, too. More of an after-image, like if I stared at Sam too long and looked away, I’d see his perfect copy, black-eyed and smiling.

I didn’t know what it was. Something innate. Something in his veins, I guessed. Something he was born with. The whispers were louder when he snuck into my bed at night, complaining of nightmares of monsters that I assured him weren’t real even as I checked to make sure there was a pistol under my pillow. The proximity of Sam, kicking my shins in his sleep, snoring loudly, making himself as much of a nuisance as an unconscious little brother possibly could… it annoyed them.

I wondered what it was. What quality did this small child possess that caused the whispers to hiss when he came near, to ignite the fight or flight part of my brain, to make me worry, make me question.

I slept more than I once did, but still not very much, so I stayed up many nights pondering it out, staring at the after-image of Sam beside me, across the room from me, on the couch, on the floor, in the backseat of Dad’s Impala. He still just looked like a kid.

Hunting was different now, too. Some monsters wouldn’t even come near me, and others would give up then and there. Like I was something powerful, something to be feared.

It made life easier.

And life went on, because that’s what life does, it keeps going and cascading and colliding whether you’re holding on or not. And Sam found out about monsters, because he was a smart kid, and he wanted to help, because he’s one of us.

We didn’t tell him about me.

I don’t know why. Dad looked to me, expecting it, and I shut my mouth and didn’t say anything. I didn’t know if it was me or the voices that didn’t want him to know. I still don’t know. Maybe both. Maybe I wanted this one semblance of normality in the brake malfunction that had become my life. Sam and his after-image didn’t need to know, didn’t need to worry or fear or assume or judge.

So when he grew older, and the after-image grew with him, I said nothing.

To his credit, he didn’t ask, either. I’m sure he noticed when monsters laid down their lives at my barrel. When they stared at me like they had seen salvation, or the rapture. Maybe he thought I was just that good. Maybe he thought it was a normal occurrence for werewolves to drop onto their knees and ask for mercy. Mercy, that word exactly, _have mercy._

It took me longer than I care to admit to realize they weren’t talking to me. They were talking to my whispers.


	5. Chapter 5

It was an accident, when it happened.

It started it all, you know. I had pushed away so much of the voices, ignored their whims, but I still had dreams. I stood victorious over mountains of dead bodies, flying a flag emblazoned with the symbol of Heaven. I sat at the right hand of God, sword ready, defending and offending and calling and reigning judgment. I kneeled in a church, felt the righteous within me, through me, moving me, tearing me to pieces.

And when I awoke, every time, I went to the shower and scrubbed it off of me.

Dad got more nervous by the day it seemed, as I hit twenty-one and Sam hit seventeen. It had been nine years since the voices had calmed in my head, since Dad displaced his own soul to give me peace.

He didn’t know I still snuck to churches and knelt at altars, because I was called there, because when my knees hit the ground hard enough to bruise I felt like I was worthy, that I slunk home and showered and scrubbed until my skin was raw with the betrayal. But the voices would leave entirely for a while, for as long as it took my kneels to heal, and so I returned, I came home, I cursed myself. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Hunting had also taken a turn, less about killing monsters and more about finding information. Dad was trying to delay the inevitable. Sam didn’t know.

What a mantra, what a phrase. Sam didn’t know. Sam didn’t know. Sam didn’t know.

Which is how we found ourselves at a college, searching for a minor god that would have answers as Sam attended the local high school.

Dad said he had found someone, someone that could help, maybe, if we could be good and get on its good side, which he said we could. They had been emailing for a while. It knew we were coming.

Dad and I got out of the Impala, and Sam didn’t know.

Dad and I went into an office, and Sam didn’t know.

Dad and I found a god, and Sam didn’t know.

Dad saw him and smiled, held out his hand and introduced himself as Jake, and me as Clint, and I looked into amber eyes and nothing was quiet anymore.

“Nice to meet ya,” the man said, giving me a raised eyebrow and an amused smile.

 _Holy holy holy_ my brain supplied. Is this what the monsters felt when they looked at me? Like they were unworthy, like every bad thing they had ever done was rolled out in front of them on a feast table, and they were ravenous but it would kill them, and there were two ways to die and not a single way to live.

Like there was a place they were meant to be and it was at the feet of the being before them, offering themself as the only sacrifice they could make, and even then it wasn’t good enough.

 _Like me,_ I thought. _He’s like me._

The whispers told me almost, told me sort of, told me to pursue it and to pursue _him_ and do not let him out of your sight Dean Winchester, do not let him leave you.

And Dad asked me what was wrong, and I didn’t trust my tongue to make sounds that weren’t ancient so I shrugged and held out my hand to the man.

He shook it, barely giving me a second glance, as I felt the voices scream for the first time in nine years. I watched Dad snap back into place. A deal was broken. Whoever Dad had given his soul to in exchange for keeping the voices at bay had decided the deal was too large now.

I was unsaveable now.

A man barely older than I had touched my palm, and I was unsaveable.

No, I realized as I watched him chat with Dad about options that he didn’t need anymore.

I was saved.

I told Dad we needed to go after sounding out the syllables in my head twenty times to make sure it was English, and he tilted his head and asked why, but no sooner had the question left his lips than he saw the mania in my eyes.

He understood immediately.

He apologized to the man and we left, and we went back to the hotel room, and we stared at each other.

“What happened?” he asked me.

“He’s like me,” I responded, and I told him that I could feel the divinity in him, and Dad looked at me with an emotion I cannot name, like he saw my entire future laid out before me and wished he could somehow, somehow stop it.

“We should move on.”

“I can’t.”

He ran his hand over his face, fingers catching on stubble and nose and lips, lips that were moving in word but released no sound. “I don’t know what to do to fix you.”

And I didn’t know how to explain to him that I didn’t _need_ fixed, that I finally understood my place in the world and it was by that man’s side, or something else, something similar. Something deep and unfathomable that tripped me just trying to name it.

So when Sam came home from school and we all ate supper and chatted and the voices screamed every time I got too close to Sam — _abomination,_ I could hear them now — and we all went to bed, I left.

I stole the Impala and I left and I drove to that college hoping to find that man again.

He was sweeping, looking out over a patch of lawn, like he was spying or scrying or contemplating existence.

“You,” I called out, head dizzy in the best possible way or maybe a horrible way.

He jumped and turned to me, all amber and gold. “You,” he repeated. “What are you doing here?”

And I was close enough to see the details of his face, and the voices pulled at me, gently, coaxing, prodding, and I let them say for me, “I came to offer myself to you.”

The man stared. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re like me,” I told him, willing him to understand. “You hear the voices, too.”

He furrowed his brow. “Alright, so you definitely escaped from the crazy house. Got it. What’s your nurse’s number?”

And he wasn’t getting it, still wasn’t _getting it_ even as I stood before him with zero barriers, none, the voices and I were on the same page for once. “You’re divine,” I told him.

“Thanks sugar cheeks, but you should really be getting home. It’s a bit too late for crazy.”

I huffed, and he was standing there so close, and he felt like an altar so I fell to my knees like every other time, and said, “Let me worship you.”

His face paled and he backed away. “Look kid, you’ve got the wrong person. Go try your spiel with some other guy. Or girl. Whatever.”

I gritted my teeth. “This is what I was _made for.”_ And the voices talked in my ears, so I couldn’t hear what he said next, and I grabbed at my head and told them to shut up shut up shut the _fuck_ up and when I opened my eyes the man was staring at me with something new in his eyes.

“Your dad said you could see the future,” he told me, voice dripping in the air like honey and wine and horror.

“No,” I told him, gritting my teeth against the concert crowd in my brain.

“I’m getting that. What are the voices telling you?”

“Holy,” I told him, “Divine. I was made for you — no, not you, but close, close enough, they want me to never let you leave my sight, they want me to—“ I gasped in air, hands tight against my ears. “They want me to invite you back home.”

He snorted, tossing his hair just slightly. “And where is home, then?”

“Heaven.” My eyes widened, like I was trying to absorb every color in the streetlamp-lit scene, the deep blues of the sky, the whites of the tiles, the rosin of his eyes. “Do they want me to kill you?”

“You can’t,” he responded immediately. “But I haven’t made up my mind about killing you.”

“Can you quiet them?”

“For a while.”

“Please.” They screamed at me, and I winced again, shoulders trembling. “Please.”

His hand raised, my eyes closed, and I felt it, felt the divinity leave me, felt human and evil and horrible, felt my soul screech in protest, felt my molecules rip apart like they were trying to hold on to a boat from the dock, ripping sinews and muscles and bone just to hold on, just to—

“There.”

I looked around. I was on my knees, in front of a stranger, at a university. There were no sounds but the distant ones of city.

“Who are you?” I asked him, the sound of my breathing harsh in my ears.

“Name’s Loki. Nice to meet the real you.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did warn y'all this one doesn't have an update schedule...

Things were kind of normal, except not really because it’s hard to explain to your little brother why you have some random guy coming around all the time.

Not that Sammy seemed to mind. His head was always off somewhere else, somewhere he wouldn’t talk to me about. His mind went places I couldn’t follow anymore, and that made me sad.

I tried not to be sad. The voices were mostly quiet now, because Loki kept pushing them away. It wasn’t a permanent fix, but it worked for now, and now was all that mattered. So I did my best to not be sad that Sammy was now Sam, and Sam had his own wants and wishes and desires that I would never know about.

Dad started to get restless, because he was Dad and staying in one spot made him panic, made him look over his shoulder and double and triple check fake IDs, because the Winchesters never got to just _rest_ somewhere.

Loki sat in the motel room, in a plastic chair that looked like it had seen a few too many naked asses, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets. I watched his hands a lot. He seemed like the sort of man that would wave his hands around as he talked, drawing diagrams in the thin air, but he never did. His hands remained still. His entire _body_ was still, like a snake in wait, like it took more effort to move than it did to just let himself slump against the nearest object.

“I promise you’ve got nothin’ to worry about,” he told Dad, who had taken to pacing the length of the room. “Nothing can find you in my town.”

“You’re tellin’ me there are no monsters here?”

“I didn’t say that. That’s… kind of impossible. But there’s nothing _dangerous_ here besides me.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“What’s the alternative?” Loki shrugged, a calculated movement that looked a bit off to me. “Besides, nothing would try to fuck with you guys with Dean around. He _reeks_ of Heaven.”

Dad turned around to face him, eyebrows furrowed, hands grasping. When Dad moved, it looked panicked, aggressive, like if he thought too much about what he was doing in that moment, he would curl up and die then and there. “There’s a Heaven?”

“You thought there was only a Hell?”

Dad scowled, all righteous teeth and lips. “What else do I not know?”

“Plenty. Bookoos, actually. What do you _want_ to know?”

Dad shifted on his feet, wrapped his arms around himself. He looked lost. “Will Dean be okay?”

“Do I look like a prophet?” Loki sighed, the movement a rise and fall of his chest that seemed too perfect, too rehearsed. “I don’t know. I can tell you he’ll be fine for the next nine years. After that, I can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Loki’s eyes were stone. “Won’t.”

I looked hard at my book, pretending that the earbuds I had in were on. They weren’t. Sam had left a while ago to do something, I didn’t know what. He didn’t tell me things anymore. I didn’t know where my brother scurried off to, what secret joys he experienced. I wanted to know. We spent our entire lives together, grew up kicking each other in too-small beds, shielding each other from gunfire, sharing meals and clothes and TVs and weapons. And now he had shut the door to all of that.

I turned the page, not even sure what book I had. I used to love books. I used to be ready to jump ship at any time, to run into the wilderness and hitch rides from strangers and write my own name in the starry dynamos, and now I was… what?

A hunter, barely. An abomination. A travesty. A horror of nature. A mistake the world had made. A human that heard voices in his head that whispered things no sane person should ever hear, ever think about.

Maybe I was broken. It would be easier to be broken, than to keep pretending that the shattered pieces could be whole in and of themselves.

I needed Sam, really. I needed a brother again. I needed someone to sit down on a park bench and talk to, that would listen to my problems just like I listened to his, and then we would throw some stones or hit each other with tree branches until all the problems felt small, felt crushable.

Yet here I was, alone.

“Dean,” a voice came, and I looked up to see Loki staring at me with something unnameable in his eyes. Which was nothing new. Nameable was not something I would ever use to describe Loki. “I know you’re listening.”

“No one ever said I couldn’t,” I grumbled, pulling out my earbuds.

He regarded me. “No. Any thoughts on the matter?”

“You said I’ll be fine for nine years.”

“I did.”

“Then I’ll be fine. What is there to discuss?”

“You could stay here. I could protect you, teach you all the things I cannot tell your father. Or your brother, even.”

It occurred to me that perhaps he would just kill me. “What’s your motive?”

“Prevention. Perhaps we can sway your destiny yet.”

“And why wouldn’t I just keep traveling with Dad and Sam?”

Loki sighed, that same, perfect movement. “Tell you what, Dean. I’ll come back in a few days. Maybe then you’ll get it.”

He left without saying goodbye, just got up and walked out the door and drove away, leaving Dad and I standing there, saying nothing.

“Where’s your brother?” Dad finally spoke.

“I don’t know.”

He sighed, weary. “Then let’s go find him. Maybe it’s… Maybe it’s time we told him.”


End file.
